Rousseau argues that Hobbes has not in fact uncovered natural man; the violent creature described in Leviathan is actually the product of the contaminating effects of centuries of social development. Natural human beings for Rousseau are indeed solitary, but they are also timid, fearful, and more likely to flee one another than to fight. Savage man’s “desires never extend beyond his physical wants; he knows no goods but food, a female, and rest”; he fears pain and hunger but not the abstraction of death. Thus the rise of political society does not represent salvation from the “warre of every
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